A review by poedogruns
The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz

3.0

The Crime Writer is a slow yarn of a tale, often times diverting from the main story track into interesting, but irrevelant diatribes about L.A. society. At times I did not mind the distraction, but it happened so frequently that the story lost its urgency. The writing itself did have an authentic Southern California feel to it. The ending was uniquely satisfying. I certainly did not predict what ultimately happened, although upon consideration, such a foundation was laid out througout the book. The characters are not the type of people I generally identify with, but I liked their struggles, and frustration with life and cheered the predictable triumph of the geniunely good people in the book, so it was an overall entertaining read. Particularly notable are the characters of Caroline, a social worker recovering from a disturbingly violent incident and Junior, a streetwise 14 year old boy, who dispite his obvious disadvantages, has a love of life and (yes) dogs.[return][return]Andrew Danner is a writer who finds himself the prime murder suspect in the deaths of two women. He is recovering from a brain tumor so he honestly doesn't know if he committed the first murder of his ex-girlfriend, (even though he was discovered looming over her dead body holding the murder weapon knife) but he is sure he is being framed for the second one, a women he did not even know. The problem is, the police have no desire to help him because they are confident he is the killer. Any motive for framing him is less then obvious. So Andrew must use his research skills and his personal connections to ferret out the the truth of the murders and hopefully, prove his own innocence.